The simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) technique enables a camera-equipped device to quickly capture a 3D model of the environment (i.e., mapping) while simultaneously tracking and obtaining six degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) pose information of the camera. Both mapping and pose tracking may be used in such applications as games, interactive visualizations and advertising applications.
Multiple camera-equipped devices performing SLAM-based mapping and pose tracking may be networked so that they may exchange map and pose information. Such devices may be, for example, camera-equipped mobile devices with wireless communication capabilities. By computing 3D transformations between the maps, maps of different devices may be correlated and combined to form a larger, shared map. Therefore, by taking advantage of the shared map and thereby reducing repetitive work, overhead in mapping may be reduced.
Map and pose information sharing may also enable or enhance such applications as multi-user gaming, multi-user design sessions, social augmented reality (for example, a user may leave messages or other content in an environment for other users retrieve), and indoor navigation, etc.
Exchanging all the map information among the devices at once may be unnecessary and may consume too many resources in terms of transmission bandwidth and transmission time because not all the map information is equally potentially useful in a given scenario and the total amount of map information may be relatively large.